I Built a $670/Day SaaS App with NO Paid Ads (Here's How)

0:00So, you want to start a startup, maybe you want to build it with AI, maybe it's a SAS, maybe it's a consumer social app, but one of the hardest parts is getting thousands of customers to come to your product on autopilot, right? Well, I brought on Jack Ficks who built a startup. It's now doing, I think, 15 or $20,000 a month in revenue. And he did it by just posting on Instagram, building in public. He shows us how he does it and then we use AI to come up

0:32with ideas for how you can do it too. Stick around for this entire episode. Some real takeaways for anyone who wants to build an audience from scratch and get customers on autopilot. [Music] All right, we got Jack Ficks on the pod. He I mean I'm not going to say you're an overnight success, but you're now making

1:0120 grand a month building in public. Yeah. I wanted to have you on to teach us how you're doing it so that other people could could copy you. Yeah, I'm I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Overnight success. Yeah, something like that. Well, it's the thing. We were talking about that before we hit record is like even this podcast like, you know, I've been doing it for four years. No one listened to it and then it started to pop off and now people see the podcast and they're like, "Oh, wow. That's really, you know, you've always crush it." But the reality is this. I'm sure the same with you,

1:36right? Like you haven't been doing 10, 15, 20k a month forever. No, not even close. Four or five years before that of basically nothing. So, uh, it all happens really fast though when it does happen, so can't complain. But if if people stay to the end of this episode, what will they tactically learn? Um, I'm going to share today basically exactly what I use to start making less than zero dollars a month um to market my mobile apps and use organic marketing like social media, posting on Instagram, Tik Tok, just like how to make money with these platforms by driving traffic

2:16to your app for like zero dollars. That's like my main thing. That's what I'm most knowledgeable about. So, if they stick around, they're definitely going to know how to do that. And when you say app, do you mean specifically mobile apps? Should people who are not building mobile apps like click out of this episode? Um, honestly, no. I think the skill of social media and organic marketing like you can drive traffic to anything. Um, just like I think

2:44consumerf facing things are much easier. So like even if you're not building something consumerf facing, I think this is extremely valuable because like whatever you learn for how to get attention is going to transfer to any business still. Cool. All right. So today we're going to learn how to get attention if you have no attention to begin with and how uh you can take that attention, monetize it, send it to your SAS app, mobile app and and that's what we're going to do. All right. You want to

3:18share your screen and we can begin? Yeah, I'll do that. Um, basically the way that I've learned how to do marketing because I did never had money for ads and I didn't like ads was organic social media posts. Um, and what specifically that means is videos. Um, you can post on Twitter. I've done this a lot. It's helped me grow one of my other businesses. But organic social

3:42media posts on Instagram and Tik Tok. You don't need a following to start this. I had zero followers when I started these pages. I've done it multiple times. I have multiple pages for the same app. Um, video content is just so easy to make. It's low effort and you can make it low effort. You can make it easily and you can like spam it out there and get a bunch of eyeballs on your product for $0. You don't have to start from anywhere. So, that's what I'm going to be talking about right now. Um, yeah. Basically, I have a guide on Twitter on all of this. Um, it's my pin

4:20tweet on Twitter. It's been used by lots and lots of people. Um, and there's some common pitfalls people fall into. And that's what I'm going to go over right now. And some like just basically tips you could use to actually like get say a,000 downloads this month or a,000 visitors to your website um for free.

4:40That's what we're going to focus on. Cool. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm looking at this and it you're make it almost feels so easy, but it's like, well, how did you come up with the idea for this type of content, right? Maybe we're going to get into that. Yeah. So, honestly, as you can see here, kind of sneak peek. Um, this page, I only post one type of content. It's 2x two images with a caption. Um, I found this format while I was iterating like I made hundreds of videos before I found

5:12that format. And now I'm just loweffort putting these out there and they still get results. So like most people might stop milking something or stop using something because it's they've used it so many times, but I I don't because if it still gets results, I'm going to keep using it. Um I mean that just makes sense to me. And like how does someone who doesn't have an idea for this format or a format like how do you come up with ideas for formats? Yeah. So, that's like the first step honestly in getting into like organic social media is you need to

5:46find ideas. And it's actually not hard. Um, all you have to do is what I do is I make a new account for whatever business I'm in. That's the first step to doing this. You make a new account because it's just easier this way. And you can then use this new account and follow content in your niche. you're going to find a ton of content that's already viral for your target audience if you're scrolling and only engaging with your niche and then you just save it for later. Like I found a video when I was scrolling on this page, my Curiosity Quench page, which is one of my apps. I

6:21made this had zero followers and I was scrolling in my niche which was like hobbies um anti-doom scrolling like these niches and I saw like this 2 by 2 video. So, I had like a million likes. So, I tried it with um I tried it with first like things to do instead of scrolling. That didn't work. I iterated. I went to hobbies. One of them blew up to like 10k views, which was abnormal cuz I was stuck below 1,000. And then I made it again. One of them had like 100k views. That is a very quick example. It usually takes a few tries, like 30 to 40

6:59to 100. But like if you don't have ideas, you just scroll in your niche and save videos. Like click that save button when you're scrolling. Um and then I just look at them later when I go to create a video. I do one a day um when I'm trying out new formats and just like mix it up every single day basically and try something new and then iterate on it if that makes sense. Are formats universal? Meaning, could you look at, you know, do you have to scroll your niche? Because sometimes you'll find a format in another niche that, you know, in your niche, people actually haven't

7:37tapped into and there's an opportunity to use that that's proven in that niche and bring it to yours. Yeah, that's actually a really good angle. I think most people, you could definitely Yeah, you definitely could bring formats to like that aren't in your niche to your niche. I think that works. Um cuz like this 2 by 2 format is just one example. There's you could do anything, but this could be applied in like a million different ways. You can write a different caption. You can have different pictures of anything. Um and that could be applied when I first found it in hobbies to food. And that's what I

8:12actually did do that um just cuz I was low effort. I did do that. I made this page and I made 30 posts on it um for my food app and one of them hit like I think 2 million because this is like a for a format that's validated in another niche and it brought it to this one. So yeah, to answer your question, yes, you

8:31absolutely can bring other formats over. The reason I just said for starting a new account is like for algorithms to know who to push your content to. If you have a new account, it's best if you only scroll in your niche just because then when you make your first video post, it knows who you're going for. So, that's important, I think, to note. Um, but if you're like scrolling on a different page and you see a format, you could definitely still reuse it. Good tip. Good tip. I never thought about that. Sam Alman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy, and he is not wrong. I

9:08think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so, too. Now, I think that you can look at trends uh to basically figure out uh what are the startup ideas you should be building. So, that's exactly why I built ideabser.com. Every single day you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox and it's all backed by high quality data trends. How we do it? People always ask. We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should

9:44be building and then we hand it on a, you know, silver platter for you to go check out. Um, we do have a few paid plans that, you know, take it to the next level. uh give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chat GBT for ideas with it, but you can start for free ideabrows.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it. Yeah, I mean that's the I think a lot of people do reuse old accounts and it can work, but I always just say like I just start a fresh account. Zero followers is actually usually an advantage because if I have

10:19an account, let's say I have a personal account and I start posting content that is not relevant to my audience, Instagram pushes that video out to your audience first or like whoever your audience was or thinks it is before. And if it doesn't resonate with them, it's not going to push it out to a huge group

10:37of people to find a new audience. Whereas a new account, it's going to test um it's going to test like different audiences, which is the really the great part of having a new account is you get that like huge widespread possibility of reach. So, you don't want to skip out on that, I think. Cool. All right. So, step one is you're scrolling in your niche, you got a fresh account, you're figuring out a format. What's next? Um first, definitely don't rush that phase. You don't want to post content on a brand new account in the first, I'd say, week. I used to say two days, three days, but like a week

11:12because you don't want the algorithm thinking you're a bot. You want them thinking this guy is a human and we want to push his content out there when the time comes. So, for the first week, I would not post any videos. And when you do post your first video, only post like one a day. Um, if you're going to post multiple, spread them out a few hours, at least, like 3, four hours. Especially for new accounts though, I just do one a day. Then you have time to iterate on

11:42content. And you want to keep that account in good standing. You don't want any algorithms thinking you're doing like some bot behavior. So, you also want to post manually. Um, I've run a social media scheduling tool and I tell people, do not use my tool for the new accounts. You want a good uh like a good standing account, which means you want to do everything I guess by the book like a human would do it at least for the first

12:07like bit until your account's warmed up. Um and then after that, after you've warmed up the account, you've waited a week and you post your first content. Um really it's all just about testing new pieces of content. Um I think something important which I mentioned in the guide is obviously you're doing this to get views to your business. So, you don't

12:27want to just make content for max views. You want to make content that's highly relevant to what you're promoting. And that's where some people will be like, I have 100k views, but I only got two signups, which is very common for like loweffort videos because usually they don't have either a call to action in the video or they're not like pinned comment is directly go download this app for this result and it's related to the real and also the main caption. Like it has to be telling people to go download it and what it's called or use it or the website link. Otherwise, like no one's

13:03going to care. they're going to scroll to the next reel. So, you have to kind of spam it in their face. But even if it but you don't have to put it in the video. Like some people, they make ads. That's like the biggest mistake for making organic content. It should not look like an ad. If it looks like an ad, they're going to scroll. The algorithm is going to give it 20 views and that's that. You might as well have not made

13:24the content. And yeah, I mean like after you found your content or a piece of content, you post it, if it works and you get 10,000 views first try, 100,000 views, well, I guess just keep doing that. Um, but usually that's not the case. Usually people end up having to post 30 videos before they see something like do well. And that's if they're making changes and iterations to improve and test new angles on each video, which most people

13:57don't, which is where they get stuck. And I think that's another pitfall is making the same video over and over again, expecting something to change. Well, when usually like it it doesn't, I guess. Uh, do you have any questions on that? Um, I think have you ever, you know, have you ever used ManyHat? because I'm just thinking about, you know, yes, I can create a video and at the end I could be like, download my app if you want more of this. Yeah, but I'm seeing the this trend around like comment X and I'll send you a link. Yeah, many many chats actually is pretty good. I' I used

14:37it before um before I actually saw any success like on social media. I was trying it, but I never I disabled it and then I realized now like actually I should probably use that now. Many chat is very good. Yeah, like comment X and then it DMs them a link to the app or something. That's actually that's actually a really good addition to this that I I've overlooked for a long time now that I realize it. Yeah, I think that's a huge thing especially for businessto business things or like tools and guides. You could definitely use like tools like many chat like automations are probably a huge addition

15:13if you can get the initial v virality like if you're just doing um it's probably not as important if you haven't got anything that catches yet but yeah once you get a working system or a working piece of content it could be huge. So let's take a quick detour for a second. Go to my Instagram instagram.commyame

15:33Greg Eisenberg. I'm literally going mini like a little bit viral right now and I don't have that many followers. If you scroll down um should I go to reals? Yeah, go to reals. So this that last reel I have many chats and it's like comment LCA which is our design agency um to get the playbook and the comments aren't loading but the

15:59comments are broken but 123 comments. That's That's a good thing when the there's so many comments that the comments are broken. Also good. Yeah. That's also very good for the algorithm. The algorithm loves when people comment too. Exactly. So, this has been a light bulb moment for me because I've never thought about Instagram using Instagram as a funnel. In in tech, we think a lot about X. We think a lot about YouTube, but um there's just so much thirst for for software content on IG and using many vids to like create an actual funnel so that it's not leaky is an has been a light bulb moment for me. So you

16:39just started using like automation like you didn't use it any time before? Literally. No, never. Zero. I've never I just signed up for an account. I I saw that. Well, I knew I was going to chat with you and I was like, I want to Yeah. I want to basically, this is why I love doing the podcast because it helps me get smarter on subjects and now I feel like I've got like a really good sense for what IG is and how to create a funnel, but you just have to like go and

17:04post. Yeah. Yeah. And and now and you've already got the content down at this point. So, this is just going to be like super a lot of fuel to your fire because because as you mentioned too, it's not just the funnel part. Like having people comment is a big part of what I'm trying to do when I make videos. Like that's a piece of what you should make your content for is like people to engage with it. Like if the algorithm sees people commenting, they're going to push it way further. If they see them watching it twice over, they're going to push it way further. So that's also a

17:38pretty important part I guess of making organic content. Recap I guess um I think or maybe before we recap um for for anyone who's making content um and wants to make organic content I would start for one post a day and then iterate and make it better or try something new. Try different formats

18:00every single day until something hits. And be patient with that because it might take a month or two especially if you're doing this for the first time to see any real results and even then you your results your views may not convert directly to signups because that's another skill in itself. Um but if you can get eyeballs you can ultimately get towards driving people to your business and making money from those eyeballs

18:27down the line at some point. Totally. Yeah. I think your step your first step is basically to get attention in the niche and then once you have that then it's like okay I've got this attention how do I actually get them to the SAS or mobile app or whatever it is that you know I I've built exactly like the first skill is attention grabbing getting attention the second skill is converting that into like actual people going to your thing uh and yeah I That's the most simple recap of it, I guess. Uh the nitty-gritty details on how you do that. Um really do come from just doing it, like doing what I said,

19:10like going to your account, warming it up, waiting a week, saving content, creating content, and that the creating content part like if you're someone who's new, just use Cap Cut. It's like the simplest tool ever. Um, I think like there's automations for everything, but if you can't do it manually, there's no point of automating it because you're not going to know what works and what doesn't. And then once you've created like 100 pieces of content, then maybe like I don't know, then maybe worry because it's going to take like it's going to take a lot of iterations to get the skill to develop a taste of what

19:47actually drives attention. So, if I'm hearing you right, the the most important thing to do is like if you're going to try to 8020 this is figuring out what is the format and figuring out the niche and consistently posting like that's really what it comes down to. Like if you can figure out a format that works in in a niche and you can consistently do it. So my question is, you know, people might be listening to this and they might be like, "Okay,

20:18Greg and Jack really understand social. They're really good at scrolling and able to identify these formats and come up with ideas. I'm not as good as them at that. And I don't want to spend five or 10 years of my life trying to get good at that. Is there a way that AI could help you um, you know, shortcut your way to figuring out the format that

20:40works?" I think to me I I think the only ways to shortcut formats are to like scroll on social media and you don't have to do it that much, but you should like if you want to really know like what goes viral, just take 10 minutes a day and be it doesn't have to be for long. You'll get the hang of it in like a week or two. 10 minutes a day, set a timer, scroll on social media and look like,

21:04okay, what did well? What is simple? What can I create? like what is not that high of effort because a lot of the videos out there are like full productions. You don't have to have a full production and then just like as I said like save those videos and try to recreate them. I know that that's probably not the answer most people want but I don't think like at this point I have been able to successfully use AI

21:27tooling to help me find those ideas. It's just like it's not something I feel like is outsourcable yet. But like there is obviously once you find one format you can use that and you can use AI to to pump out content for that format or help you ide it on it. Can we try that just for fun? Can we for example take a image of let's say your cooking app the yeah the cooking meme page. Let's take

21:56an like let's take a screenshot of it. Let's pump it into chat GPT and let's see, hey, you know, I want 10 ideas based on this. Let's see if it's actually good at it. It's good that you have the the screenshot of the homepage, but I think actually showing like Oh, the actual app. No, the um go to what's it called? Do my Instagram page. Yeah, the Instagram page. Do fat. Yeah, like giving one of these like people who Oh, okay. Got you. Yeah, I got you. like using this format idea on I saw this format. I'm the CEO of DOF app. It's a food diary app. Um, by the way, I love

22:36how we're just doing this live like we have no idea if this is going to work or not, but let's, you know, this is dope. Um, help me. What do we want as a result? Like versions of this or like whole new ideas? Yeah. What do you think? I think like if I'm it's like okay I you know I found a cool format but I need more ideas. Um and I want ideas that have a high likelihood of success. So it's like you I'm the CEO of Doo Food Diary app. I found Yeah, exactly. I found this I'm just narrating for the people are listening on audio. I found this video format that

23:18gets views, but I want some more ideas. Video format ideas that can bring in more views for my that are related to but I want some more video format ideas that can bring in more views that are related to my food diary app. Let's see what happens. And then should like make it low make the ideas possible to create with low effort like in in a simple video editor or is that is that too much? Let's try it. I mean I'm let's

23:54just see. I'm curious too because this format I've been I've been now autom I've been working on assistant to automate the format um like the 2 x two grids like you can automate the images. I've done that. That's that one is automated. the one like that just showed you. Um, that one is automated. Like I made this with an automated system and I I'm working on bulking it. But like yeah, I don't know about more ideas. That's what I'm curious too because Oh, 10 more loweffort ideas. This versus that energy levels. So split screen or swipe comparison. How I feel after eating a bagel versus oatmeal with berry. That's

24:32pretty good. That could work. Especially slideshows are kind of hot right now. Yeah. No, that's actually that's actually pretty solid. I think the hardest part is getting the copy right. Like you I'd say um direct your direct AI to sound like Gen Z. It's pretty good at it. Use lowercase. Like those things kind of make it feel not AI. Um foods

24:54that secretly drain you. That's actually that's a pretty good it's not a bad idea. Two for two. Best food diary entries this week. Uh, I mean it's kind of it sounds like an ad, but but it could be adapted. Like you could be like it could be adapted. It's it's something there's something there. Four. Relatable bad food mood skits. I don't know what kind of I don't know even know what it's trying to do. Five underrated snack ideas that make me feel 10 out of 10. Okay. Snack ideas like slides or 2 by two. Okay, that's not bad. Foods I tested for seven days

25:37ranked by mood. Kind of like an ad, but that could be interesting. Like a story um type of content style. What I logged today in doof series true ad. That's like an ad. Too much of an ad. Yeah. Like what I ate today and then you just have at the end like or like an integration of it. Blogging and doof. That might work, but still not titled like that. Uh foods that make you smart or dumb. Oh, that could be cool. You could like even show

26:06logs in the app of it with the food. Um, food mood equals mood swap. Swap morning pastry focus. Kind of weird. There's some ideas there. You're right. Like it definitely could help you find ideas, especially if you're someone who doesn't know what to post and you're seeing things on your for you page when you're scrolling, but you don't know like how to adapt it. It could help you bridge the gap there. I think it's obviously not autonomous. You have to have some sort of like idea of what's going to work. And I think scrolling for 10 minutes a day for like a week would do that. You'd know like you could train

26:45yourself pretty quickly. But yeah, I mean you're kind of right. This this if I wanted ideas to try new things other than that one format, I mean this would help. Like yeah, this would definitely help. Yeah. I think uh some other tips for people is, you know, you can say like pretend you're Jack Ficks. And Jack is amazing at finding formats. And here's what I, you know, I like that he he he he comes up with very simple ideas. Um he talks like, you know, Gen Z. Um he isn't, you know, promoting his app all the time. It feels very value ad. So you saying pretend like you're you're a brand or

27:27person is very helpful in terms of uh figuring this out. Yeah, I didn't know that. I I've honestly not used um chatt for ideiation as much as I probably should, but I definitely think people watching this should use this tool because like th this would save you a lot of time and effort. Even if you're still tra using social media and like doing what I said, scrolling, this is going to help you get to probably the

27:54same place faster. Yeah, there you go. Um, anything else you want to add? Um, I mean, I think the best thing if someone is like missing context, they like aren't sure like what to do, just like probably go to the guide. I I'm going to keep saying that cuz it's like I can't say everything perfectly, but if you can reread these things um and learn like the pitfalls of not warming up your account um and and keeping posting consistently and trying new formats, just like yeah, re read the guide if you're unsure of what to do. Also, like make sure you warm up your accounts properly. That is very important. If you

28:33don't warm up your accounts properly, you're going to be stuck posting videos to the void. you're getting like you you should be able to get hundreds of views per video on a new account if you warmed it up properly. If you're not, then something is wrong and you should probably stop posting. But I mean, I think anyone can do this. Like, it's very accessible. It doesn't take much to make content. And I'm excited for people to try it and share like what they learned, how they did. Amen. Well, appreciate you coming on. I'll include the link uh to the guide um and maybe

29:05I'll write my own notes on it as well. um in the show notes and include where to find you on social so people can go and follow you. Dude, thanks for I by the way I do agree with you like I think that anyone could do this. Um it does you you you know you you you do have to do it for longer than you expect and and um and you do have to develop like a system um and that takes time. But um you know we get numb to these numbers of

29:37like hundreds and thousands of views. But like think of a stadium, right? Like a stadium with 2,000 3,000 5,000 people. That's a lot of people. So when you see numbers like hundreds or a few thousands, like don't be discouraged. Those are real people who might buy your product, who might download your app, um, and might change your life. So Jack, thanks again for coming on and I hope you come back on soon. Thanks for having

30:03me. Later.